Week 6: Phoebe Bridgers, girl in red, and Other Indicators of the Swift Effect

Welcome back to week six of my senior project blog! This week, I focused my analysis on Swift’s opening acts, drawing conclusions from data available on the music analytics website Chartmetric, and continuing with my series of interviews.

To examine Swift’s opening acts, I began with a focus on Phoebe Bridgers – one of my personal favorite artists and an opener on Swift’s tour. Based on the chart below, it appears that Bridgers did see an increase in her monthly Spotify listeners around her Eras dates – a total of 559,076 new monthly listeners by the end of her Eras Tour-filled month of May 2023. This increase makes sense: if we divide that number by 9

(the number of shows Bridgers opened for) we get approximately 62,000. This would equate to about 88% of audience members at each show listening to Bridgers’ music leading up to the event, leaving significant room for a decent number of these new listeners who may have also found her organically/not connected to Swift. This is quite a high percentage of audience members engaging with Bridgers’ work – something we can likely attribute to, as Chris Dell’Olio said in our recent interview, the close relationship Swift builds with her opening acts, making them seem like friends to her and potential friends for the audience (more fodder for the parasocial relationships that appear to foster success for artists like Swift).

However, along with this initial increase comes a steep drop in Bridgers’ listeners following the Eras Tour hype. By the end of June 2023, Bridgers’ monthly listeners dropped back almost to where they initially began. Although fans may have been listening to Bridgers in preparation for their show or due to heightened excitement at the moment, she did not see a sustained increase. The growth typically attributed to Eras Tour exposure (circled in the image to the left) is not even very significant in the one-year view pictured to the left. It is more or less consistent with the longer-term rise in monthly listeners Bridgers has been experiencing since the release of her album Punisher in 2020. The Eras Tour was certainly not her steepest period of growth, so it is unlikely that exposure from the Eras Tour can be cited for much of Bridgers’ future success.

Another opening act – girl in red – exhibits a similar trend. While there were large increases in Facebook Talks (number of Facebook engagements with an artist page) and Facebook Likes during her June 2023 Eras shows, there is simultaneously a decline in her monthly Spotify listeners (see graphs). Despite her increased social media engagement among a slightly older audience on Facebook, this did not translate to other social media platforms such as Instagram or genuine engagement with her work. There was a significantly steeper increase in girl in red’s Spotify listeners around fall 2022 and fall 2023 than seen during her stops on the

Eras Tour. This can likely be attributed to the popularity of “we fell in love in october” – a song that is “trendy” to listen to during the fall season. When examining this data, it appears that social media trends aided girl in red’s career more than exposure from the highest-grossing tour in history – a surprising statistic that underscores the power of social media in today’s music industry.

This is the same sentiment I received when speaking to Ripleigh’s Creamery – a local business in Philadelphia. While there was a lot of Taylor Swift excitement in Philly while she was in town and Ripleigh’s made an extra $30,000 that Swift-filled weekend, they did not experience a sustained increase in business, besides greater name recognition. At the end of the day, artists are businesses too, and they experience a similar trend. Live events are strong contributors to short-term growth, but a long-term increase in business requires holding onto more than increased name recognition.

In contrast, a conversation with Marc Faletti at Latchkey Records in Philadelphia revealed a different sentiment, stating that after the Philly Eras Tour, they completely switched their business strategy. As a relatively new business in May 2023, their shop was mainly focused on 80s and 90s music. However, after they did three times their usual business the Friday Swift was in town and they hosted an all-ages Taylor Swift party, they realized that they could take a more creative approach to their business. There was a whole new audience they could be marketing to – fans of current pop, indie, and alternative music who often can’t find what they are looking for in local record shops geared toward an older audience. The success of their Taylor Swift concert pregame party and their $1,500 Friday (when they typically did $500 Fridays) led them to completely flip their business strategy. Now, they organize regular events and listening parties, geared toward specific demographics, increasing their revenue significantly. For example, with the release of Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, they had all four vinyl variants available in-store and hosted a release party, leading to a $4,000 Friday. Thus, while extra revenue Latchkey accrued was due to a short Swift-filled Philly weekend, their takeaways from Swift’s tour and interactions with her fans led to long-term changes in their economic strategies that have prompted significant growth. As Mr. Faletti would state, Swift coming into town completely changed their business for the better.

Ultimately, this week, I gained greater insight into the opening acts portion of my research, observing similarities between the artists and the local businesses who gained exposure from the Eras Tour. Next week, I am looking forward to more interviews, especially those focused on transformations and continuities within the music/ticketing industry, as well as a deeper dive into Swift’s opening acts.